Lumia 950 heat and battery drain.

[Dedpewl]

I was on cellular data for 3 hours and texting and multitasking and my 950 went from 98% to 31% and feels like a stove right now... Wtf 318 sucks

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I was on cellular data for 3 hours and texting and multitasking and my 950 went from 98% to 31% and feels like a stove right now... Wtf 318 sucks

A few things you can try out:
Check settings >system > battery > which apps are using the most energy?
Again, in battery section, which apps can run in the background? Can you disable those you don't need? Keep messaging enabled to run in background
In battery section, you can also set up battery saver to kick in when the battery reaches a certain percentage. I keep mine on 100% so it's always on battery saver mode
In mail app, how often do you have mails to sync? Generally the longer the time period, the less the battery usage
What about brightness settings? Is it on high or auto? Auto is better than a fixed setting
If you finds that messaging app uses a lot of battery, this could be because it's linked with skype. Go to messaging app, settings and unlink skype
In photos app, do you have auto upload of photos enabled? If yes, try to not upload high res photos and videos unless you are charging the phone and on wifi
When you use some apps that are not data heavy like whatsapp or mail, you can use a lower network speed like 2G. It's what I do usually. I only use LTE when I have to use 6tag
If you're using edge for basic browsing, you could try using UC browser. Not only does it use less data but you can also disable images which means you save even more on data. The less data your phone has to receive, the less the energy used
In settings > privacy - check each of those settings to see which apps can use what. For example I can't understand why Word would need to access location info so I disabled that. There might be apps using services that they are not meant to use
Finally, keep wifi/cellular off when you don't need to have them on. The toggles in action centre are pretty fast so it doesn't take much time in switching internet on/off
Disable auto update of apps, you only update when you are ready and not when you are in need of critical things


Hope this helps you

Ps: I'm surprised your phone isn't at zero after 3 hours of cellular. Mine would be at 0 in less than 2 hours (lumia 1020)

 

[Davey123]

I have had my L950 since December. In the past few days it is getting really hot and my battery drains extremely fast. I have not changed any of my settings. So, I am not certain why this is happening now. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

 

[anon(50597)]

I have had my L950 since December. In the past few days it is getting really hot and my battery drains extremely fast. I have not changed any of my settings. So, I am not certain why this is happening now. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

Not an expert, but the first thing I would do is go into battery settings and see if an app is at fault.

 

[TheThundax]

I experienced the same issue last week... Phone kept being hot even when not used...
I removed and replaced the battery again and installed the latest phone-update...
After that I don't have any issues anymore and my battery seems to last even longer than before the issue...

 

[Chintan Gohel]

I have had my L950 since December. In the past few days it is getting really hot and my battery drains extremely fast. I have not changed any of my settings. So, I am not certain why this is happening now. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

some app updates change their own settings without you knowing. I found out whatsapp enabled itself in the background after an update and I had to disable it

 

[Davey123]

Thanks. I checked for the latest phone-update and noticed that it was already downloading and was stuck at 27%. This was the culprit of my phone getting really hot and the battery draining. Once I fixed this problem and the latest update installed, the problem went away.

 

[Anton Theunissen]

Had the same problem on my Lumia 950 after a few months of fine use and after being very very disappointed because of the missing FM Radio. Anyway, heating and drain have become excessive. Now I recently installed Cortana, so I suspected her. After reading several forums I TURNED OFF NFC and the phone cooled down almost immediately, even while charging. Maybe a conflict between Cortana and NFC drivers?

 

[obakir]

I'm suspecting facebook app synchronization causing this. it keeps on refreshing the profile photos. I have 4gb of usage in one month although I don't actually open the app.

 

[Joshua Straughn]

I understand you are trying to be helpful, however, seeing suggestions like "turn off Wi-Fi" or "unlink skype messaging" when the OP has Microsoft's flagship 950 device is upsetting. Clearly, a device this new and robust should handle such things without battery drain or heating up. My wife and I have been chasing heating and battery drain issues on her 950 for two months now so my frustration with shelling out $600 for this unit is high. Her 1020 ran better than the 950 does and that is truly too bad.

 

[Anton Theunissen]

My heat & drain problems are totally gone, must've been due to an update! I used the device recovery tool to reset the phone but that didn't help the first few days. I had email problems as well - not anymore. I hope yoiu'll experience the same!

 

[CraigCole]

I understand you are trying to be helpful, however, seeing suggestions like "turn off Wi-Fi" or "unlink skype messaging" when the OP has Microsoft's flagship 950 device is upsetting. Clearly, a device this new and robust should handle such things without battery drain or heating up. My wife and I have been chasing heating and battery drain issues on her 950 for two months now so my frustration with shelling out $600 for this unit is high. Her 1020 ran better than the 950 does and that is truly too bad.

AMEN to this! We shouldn't have to tweak things, disable CORE functionality or search far and wide on internet forums to get these phones to have decent battery life or not run hotter than a bonfire. The 950 is an expensive, ostensibly premium device and, to use a stupid cliche, it should just work right out of the box. For the life of me I cannot understand how others are so quick to dismiss the issues with this phone and its big brother, the XL.

I've brought this up several times before but it's worth saying again. My friends with iPhones never have to worry about battery life, excess heat, whether the device will charge when plugged into a USB port, if it will decide to function in a vehicle with Bluetooth, NEVER. With WP 7, 8 and now 10, you'd think Microsoft would have the basics figured out by now, but evidently that's asking too much of them ...

 

[Jakoh]

looks like .420 is good to go, battery drain has significantly improved. This could now be used as daily driver.

 

[obakir]

no such thing here. On wifi it seems improved. LTE the same.

 

[David Clarke2]

Someone has deleted my previous post.However,I have increased my battery saver to 100% disable some apps that are running in the background.I,m seeing great improvement with my battery life.

 

[mikepalma]

Someone has deleted my previous post.However,I have increased my battery saver to 100% disable some apps that are running in the background.I,m seeing great improvement with my battery life.

This is a joke?

 

[vadim frunza]

I just bought a Lumia 950 today and am having heat and battery issues. Updated everything including to latest non insider windows 10. I previously owned a 640 XL and many other windows phones but 640XL was last one. So I noticed this phone is having these issues but my 640 XL had none of these issues on latest preview insider build. No I'm not gonna turn battery saver on 100%.... And I have all my settings same as 640 XL. Any input? Is it just this build of win10? It especially got hot when charging and updating since I needed more than % to update.

 

[Jakoh]

I just bought a Lumia 950 today and am having heat and battery issues. Updated everything including to latest non insider windows 10. I previously owned a 640 XL and many other windows phones but 640XL was last one. So I noticed this phone is having these issues but my 640 XL had none of these issues on latest preview insider build. No I'm not gonna turn battery saver on 100%.... And I have all my settings same as 640 XL. Any input? Is it just this build of win10? It especially got hot when charging and updating since I needed more than % to update.

What build are you on? I was fine on 10586.1000.
This phone does get warm in casual use. Blame the 808.
I think qualcomm has worsened its reputation by going to 64bit when it wasnt ready than it would have by going to 64bit when it was ready but late, like with the 820.

 

[vadim frunza]

What build are you on? I was fine on 10586.1000.
This phone does get warm in casual use. Blame the 808.
I think qualcomm has worsened its reputation by going to 64bit when it wasnt ready than it would have by going to 64bit when it was ready but late, like with the 820.

I'm on the latest non insider build. 10586.420 I believe. I noticed the battery has gotten better since day one but the heating still gets slightly warm. not bad tho.

 

[Skyway]

I'm on the latest non insider build. 10586.420 I believe. I noticed the battery has gotten better since day one but the heating still gets slightly warm. not bad tho.

The snapdragon 808 (which is a dual core 1.82 ghz and a quad core 1.44 ghz cpu) will get significantly warmer than the snapdragon 400 in the 640xl (which is a quad core 1.2 ghz cpu). The significantly higher resolution screen of the 950 is going to require more power to drive than the 640xl. The usb-c port charges a lot faster than the micro usb on the 640xl, which will heat up the battery a lot more.

All three of these reasons is why the 950 runs hotter than another phone like the 640xl.